Page 101 of Under the Lights

And it smelled like him.Fuck.

“You’re welcome,” he said, grinning like he knew exactly what he’d done.

“Don’t make this a thing,” I warned, even though I was already memorizing the way the cotton settled over my skin like it belonged there.

Too late. It was already a thing.

And then, a voice behind us broke the spell.

“Coach! She sprayed the bucket at me!”

“Well, she called me a soggy muffin first!”

Clearing my throat, I straightened. Pretended I hadn’t just shown him every soft place in my armor.

But Dom didn’t stop watching me. And I didn’t ask him to.

Thirty

Dom

The air in the locker room was thick with the tang of sweat, leather, and whatever God-awful body spray Knox always doused himself in. Metal lockers clanged open and shut, echoing off the tiled walls.

The overhead fluorescents buzzed faintly, casting a harsh white glare over the scuffed benches and gear-strewn floors. Somewhere across the room, someone was blasting old-school rap over a tinny speaker, while someone else argued about fantasy league points.

I was tying my cleats, propping one foot up on the bench and tightening the laces when Jax flopped down beside me. He had a smug grin on his face, and his shoulder pads were still dangling off one arm.

“Dude. You remember that hookup I was telling you about? The one who wanted to do this freaky … never mind.” He pursed his lips sheepishly, and I snorted.

“Yeah, I remember. What about her?” I peered up at him, eyebrows raised.

He leaned in a little. “Apparently, she’s in Sierra’s old sorority. Said some weird shit the other day.”

Now my curiosity was piqued. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

Jax sucked his teeth, dropping his voice. “She said Sierra got iced for ‘not falling in line.’ Whateverthatmeans. Sounds like some Mean Girls-bullshit if you ask me.”

Wasn’t that the norm for places like that? It sounded like a breeding ground for Mean Girls to me.

“Sure does. Go figure.” I said casually, trying not to let on what was really going through my mind.

While I could imagine Sierra being stubborn and maybe not the easiest person to get along with at all times, I couldn’t imagine her ’not falling in line’. Sierra was a fucking stickler for rules.

What reason could she have for not going along with whatever her sorority had been doing?

Then there was the bitterness tinging her voice whenever her sorority days came up or when she’d briefly told me about getting kicked out. She’d said,“They valued loyalty more than honesty.”

Until now, I hadn’t given too much thought to it, hadn’t really asked too many questions. I’d been too busy taking advantage of the circumstances this situation had landed her in, too busy to win her over.

What … what if this wasn’t just a fallout? Just some disagreement gone wrong, taken too far? What if it was something more serious?

I didn’t know much about how sororities worked, but the whole situation was starting to smell off. Sierra was a good person — that much I knew. And the fact that she didn’t want to talk about what happened only made my brain spiral with worst-case scenarios.

Why the hell would they kick her out?Yeah, she could be prickly, but underneath all that?

She was real. Genuine. Kinder than anyone I knew.

Something didn’t sit right. And if it had anything to do with her, then it had everything to do with me.

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